Comcast Says That If You Object To Its Merger With Time Warner Cable, You're Ignorant And Unreasonable

from the because-. dept

Oh, Comcast. Remember how it was going to try to be a bit more subtle in pushing for approval of its merger with Time Warner Cable? Well, you can only deny your true nature for so long. The main force behind getting the merger approved, Comcast's Executive VP David Cohen -- the company's most powerful lobbyist who isn't registered as a lobbyist because he's realized that as long as he says he's not lobbying, he isn't -- has announced that no one knowledgeable or reasonable has objected to the merger. By implication, of course, this means that everyone objecting to the merger is ignorant and unreasonable:

"I have been struck by the absence of rational, knowledgeable voices in this space coming out in opposition or even raising serious questions about the transaction." Cohen added.

Meanwhile, the obviously ignorant and unreasonable Writers Guild of America West has spoken out against the merger, noting that Comcast's increasing use of broadband "caps, tiers, metering or other usage-based pricing" could create serious problems in killing off competitive online video distributors. And the eminently knowledgeable and reasonable Comcast retorted that it doesn't have any caps at all. Oh no. It's merely "testing data thresholds."

"We don’t have data caps — and haven’t for about two years," said Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast’s vice president of government communications. "We have tested data thresholds where very heavy customers can buy more if they want more — but that only affects a very small percentage of our customers in a few markets."

Apparently, spewing complete bullshit is the only thing that counts as "reasonable" and "knowledgeable" in the minds of Comcast's top execs.

The default answer of the FCC to any proposed merger should be "no" from a purely business perspective. We've already had to break up one telecommunications company. At the rate we're headed we're going to have to do it again before the decade is out.

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The implication seems to be that they are currently suspended until after the merger. Shows the caps are unnecessary and they could suspend them when it's politically advantageous and restore them afterwords.

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We have tested data thresholds where very heavy customers can buy more if they want more

Sheer bullshit.If you are a heavy user with one speed you'll still use a whole lot with larger pipes. Simply because what limits you effectively is the pipe. This weekend I went on a download spree. Between installing Windows (and updating it), Netflix, downloading a few games (Steam) on my notebook and grabbing 1080p anime (that is not available in my country btw and I only downloaded 3 episodes) I gobbled down over 80Gb on my 35mbit connection. I don't do it often but this is basically the entirety of most caps (for comparison, the caps for 10mbit on a local provider here is 90Gb). And I'm not even mentioning the Gb uploaded synchronizing a few folders with my cloud storage.

This is not a heavy user, this is just regular using. They are full of bullshit, they want money, that's it.

TIme to Organize

New organization: IgnorantandUnreasonable.org which is reasonably an organization that everyone except Comcast merger fanatics would automatically belong to. There are four levels of membership*:

SuperStar: You are a Comcast subscriber but wish dearly there was another choice.

Proponent: You are not a Comcast subscriber and daily praise that you are not.

Adherent: You are a TimeWarner subscriber and rue the day this merger will take place.

Agnostic: You live in a bubble lined with cupidity and complacency and cannot be bothered to be concerned about what some big corporations might or might not do, but will cry the loudest when the negative impacts become clear sometime own the road.

Re: Brilliant!

Only an ignorant, unreasonable and greedy person would expect other companies, such as Netflix, to pay for all their infrastructure upgrades. Then proceed to squeeze more money from their customers through artificially low data cap limits.

Then finish their whole argument by saying all of the above still isn't enough, and proceed to push legislators and the public to approve a merger giving Comcast a near total monopoly on America's landline broadband market.

Not to mention the extraordinary leverage a residential broadband monopoly will grant Comcast in peering negotiations with Tier 1 ISPs.

I use the term 'negotiate' lightly, because in reality it's more like extortion, from what Level3 and Cogent have been stating.

as soon as the boss of a company starts putting out comments like this that the shit is about to hit fan for customers. it's always the same when there is far more to be gained by a merger, so much effort put into convincing the sceptics.

As a previous Time Warner user, my new rate has only increased by $50 for the exact same internet that still doesn't reach advertised speeds and has nearly unusable WiFi! Oh, sorry, I must be too ignorant to figure out why this is an improvement. My bad.

Break up all big media

To preserve free market competition and prevent market distortions from oligopolies, nobody should be allowed to own more than, say, 5% market share of the media space.

Breaking up all the big media companies, telecoms and ISPs into smaller bits will do wonders for bringing back a free press (which we haven't had in years since news organizations will never fund serious investigative reporting into fellow corporations as they are "potential advertisers"), preserving net neutrality, stopping copyright trolls, and a host of other abuses and harm to true capitalism and democracy.

Re: Break up all big media

"nobody should be allowed to own more than, say, 5% market share of the media spac"

That wouldn't do much to competition: companies would distribute markets so each gets a few neighbourhoods or towns.

The solution must be to encourage companies to enter markets where where are competitors. For example, Comcast-Time Warner should transfer half their customers from a few key markets to companies that don't operate there.

Re: Re: Break up all big media

But that's the way it used to be before deregulation. There were numerical limits on how many newspapers/TV stations/radio stations you could own in a given market. Those rules were removed and now we have the situation where almost all media (including small "hometown" newspapers) are owned by a handful of huge corporations.

And you know what we had before deregulation? A LOT more competition, and a LOT more diversity.

Softbank

Sell it to Masayoshi Son of Softbank. He would love having TimeWarner and he could do to US internet, broadband and mobile rates what he did to Japan's rates. I get one bill from Softbank for my internet, mobile phone, ISP and home phone for less than $30/month. And I don't have to worry about tiers, caps or all that BS you stupid Americans have to.

Comcast merger is totalitarianism in media

I'm in awe of the hubris of Comcast. Is there no ethics, morals values other than the dollar as appraised by Wall Street?

I guess we can say "those who live by Wall Street are destined to die by Wall Street."

This power play is so unnecessary. Wall Street does not need more profit from Comcast, Comcast could be a service provider in support of democractic process. Too bad they remain one of the Black Hats, the blackest of Black hats at the moment.